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''Tipping the Balance of the International Order?'' Vortrag von Prof. Antje Wiener, Universität Hamburg

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By violating fundamental norms such as the rule of law and international law, powerful UN member states currently threaten the rule-based international legal order in unprecedented ways. To capture transformative effects and develop strategic responses to such ‘deep’ contestations we require a better understanding of how distinct practices of contestation affect international order. What will tip or maintain the balance of international order? This lecture argues that to address this question, we require a better understanding of the relationality between deep and normal contestation as political practices vis-à-vis norms. While both practices are related, they trigger quite different dynamics. Deep contestations are typically destructive, target fundamental principles of order, and have potentially order-changing effects. Normal contestations, by contrast, are constructive and perform a regulating and constitutive role in everyday politics. As deep contestations are increasingly carried out by governments that were originally committed to liberal-democratic constitutional principles, the political stakes are rising, and the threat to the United Nations Charter Order (UNCO) has become more pressing. The lecture introduces both practices and explains why a balanced international order depends on paying more attention to normal contestation, and here, especially conditions of access for a multiplicity of global stakeholders, as the order's balance rests on the medieval maxim 'quod omnes tangit' (what affects everyone must be approved by all).

 04.11.2026, 16-18 Uhr in Raum 2/0090 im Landgrafenhaus (U|02) in der Unistraße 7